Gabe's Story - Living with Autism and Delays

This first post will just be a brief introduction to Gabe.
Gabe was born to parents who were heavily involved with alcohol and drugs. He was removed from those parents before he was a year old. At that time he was placed in foster care. About a year later he was placed with an adoptive family.
That is when I first met Gabe. He was nearly 2 years old and did not walk or talk. His adoptive parents enrolled him in various therapies such as occupational and physical therapy. In time he learned to walk. Language was much more difficult. He struggled to talk. Slowly he built vocabulary, but his annunciation was so poor that it was hard to understand him.
Gabe did not have much interest in playing with toys. However, he quickly learned the word MINE and would scream it at anybody who attempted to touch one of his toys. Attempts to play with him with his toys resulted in melt downs.
It quickly became obvious that  Gabe liked  videos.  His parents got  him several  videos that were appropriate for  little ones his age. It  was amazing to see how quickly  he memorized those videos. It seemed as if the videos were helping him learn to talk. However, communicating with him was still nearly impossible.